Sent for publishing January 12, 2009
Gaza and Israel
To the Editor,
As I, along with other warmly dressed, well fed Canadians, filled our shopping carts in our local food store, scenes of the horror and destruction of lives and property in that little strip of land known as Gaza kept crossing my mind.
Gaza borders the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It is home to 1.5 million Palestinians, many are refugees from other parts of the region. 80 per cent of Gaza's working force is unemployed. There is a great deal of poverty and unrest in Gaza. This has prompted Ron Paul, who is a Republican and was a nominee in the recent presidential election, to make this statement about the attacks on Gaza in the House of Representatives: "But I am appalled by the long-standing Israeli blockade of Gaza,--a cruel act of war"
Most of us have seen the media pictures of the rockets being fired into Israel, and the indiscriminate disproportionate bombing, [as if any of this is humanely justified] of the urban areas of Gaza. To date, over 700 Palestinians have been killed, thousands have been injured including many civilians.
To understand the desperation and hopelessness of the Palestinian people of this region, historians tell us that the roots of the present strife began in the late 1800's, when Jewish travelers visited the biblical areas of the holy land, and romanticized about the eventual coming together of the widely dispersed Christian Zionists to the "promised land", which they deemed to be the will of Divine Providence.
The decline of the German Ottoman empire after WW1 saw Great Britain become the jurisdictional power of that region of the Middle East. With the help of Britain, Christian Zionist Theodor Herzl initiated and provided financial help in establishing Jewish settlements in the land that is now known as Israel since 1948. Naturally, many Palestinians resented the take-over.
In the Israel/ Palestine war of 1967, Israel also took over the West Bank from Jordon, and the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem from Egypt.
Christian Zionist's fundamentalists have a large supportive base in the USA. They have allied their religious beliefs of the End Times, i.e., Armageddon, to some of Israeli's political interests who share similar beliefs. This has worked well for the US administration, who has always viewed Israel as the primary base in their aggressive struggle to be the planet's undisputed world power. The US has invested heavily in making Israel the fourth largest military power in the world. Part of that plan was to maintain access to the largest oil resources in the Middle East..
About 20 per cent of the citizens of Israel oppose the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza. The US and its allies have demanded that Palestinians unilaterally and without question recognize Israel as a sovereign state. However, Israel has never recognized the right of Palestinians to have a sovereign state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, or for that matter anywhere else in the region.
Leo Kurtenbach,
Box 268,
Cudworth, Sask., S0K 1BO
Phone (306) 256 3638